Sustaining Greater Manchester’s Legacy of Pioneering LGBTQ+ Rights

Join Manchester Pride at their fourth annual Manchester Pride Conference on Tuesday 22 March 2022!

Greater Manchester is a city to be proud in. A city dedicated to transformation, unity, collaboration, social justice and equality … we do things differently here.

From the legacy of Alan Turing to the campaigning work of Allan Horsfall in 1958; from Manchester’s Gay Activists Alliance and the radical acts of ACT UP Manchester; to the unified protesting of Clause 28 in 1988 – Greater Manchester has a long and rich history of being at the forefront of the fight for LGBTQ+ liberation for all.

Manchester’s activist roots run deep, and local activists played pivotal roles that continue to transform the UK’s social and political landscape today.

As we campaign for a world where LGBTQ+ people are free to live and love without prejudice, we’re eager to open conversations about how each one of us can work to sustain Greater Manchester’s legacy of pioneering LGBTQ+ rights.

> > Book Your Free Place Here < < 

About The Conference

We’re pleased to welcome you to our fourth annual Manchester Pride Conference, taking place in-person on Tuesday 22 March 2022 at the Lowry, Salford Quays. The event will also be live streamed to ensure the Manchester Pride Conference is accessible to all.

The Manchester Pride Conference provides the opportunity for audiences to attend a diverse range of panels and workshops featuring some of the UK’s leading LGBTQ+ voices. The conference aims to assist attendees in expanding their knowledge on LGBTQ+ issues, whilst also providing practical tools and resources to drive change within organisations and as individuals, all year round.

Panels

Greater Manchester Activism and beyond: The Next Steps

Tackling racism within the LGBTQ+ community

How are we making spaces accessible for neurodivergent and disabled LGBTQ+ people?

The Changing Landscape of LGBTQ+ Rights

Protecting Trans Youth

Working Class and Queer

Workshops

LGBTQ+ Affirmation and the future of EDI, facilitated by Dr. Christopher Owen, Inclusivity Development Manager at Manchester Pride. The Conference will feature a Spotlight Presentation from Mancunian writer, actor and HIV activist, Nathaniel Hall (He/him). Nathaniel’s award-winning solo show ‘First Time’, a powerful story about living with HIV, received audience and critical acclaim.

Joining our panel on Greater Manchester Activism and beyond: The Next Steps will be local LGBTQ+ rights pioneer Tony Openshaw (He/him), co-ordinator of the over 50’s LGBTQ+ social and support group, Out In The City.

Lady Bushra (He/she) is the brainchild of British Asian comedian, Amir, and joins us as a panellist on The Changing Landscape of Global LGBTQ+ Rights following a stellar performance at the Gay Village Party in 2021.

Taking part in our panel on Protecting Trans Youth, award-winning trans activist and author, Charlie Craggs (She/her), is best known for her national campaign Nail Transphobia, her poignant book To My Trans Sisters and her BBC documentary Transitioning Teens.

Ali Wilson (She/her) is a neurodivergent and queer theatre maker, producer and comedian based in Manchester. Ali is also Director of Every Brain, and will join our How are we making spaces accessible for neurodivergent and disabled LGBTQ+ people? Panel with the intent to open discussions on the intersections of neurodivergence and queerness. Also joining the panel is Joshua Hubbard (all pronouns) – originally from Oldham, Joshua is a working class, neurodivergent (ADHD), queer, award-winning dance artist, actor, director and producer.

Founder and curator of The Cocoa Butter Club, Sadie Sinner (She/her) also joins this year’s Conference! Sadie Sinner is creates productions which celebrate performers of colour, and facilitates workshops on reclaiming and redistributing the narrative of racially, gender and sexuality othered bodies.

We’re thrilled to welcome Manchester-based queen and star of Channel 4’s Drag SOS, Anna Phylactic (She/they/he) to this year’s Conference, and Creative Director and DJ, Rebecca Swarray (She/her), of RebeccaNeverBecky collective!

Keep an eye out for more exciting announcements.

The Day The World Came To Huddersfield

The UK’s first-ever national Pride took place in Huddersfield town centre on 4 July 1981 and archivists are asking people who took part and took pictures to get in touch.

There were threats of violence and police intimidation ahead of the march by gay rights activists.

To mark the 40th anniversary, a series of arts and archive events will take place until autumn 2022.

Part of these events is a call-out from the West Yorkshire Archive Service (WYAS) to anyone who attended or watched for photos, banners, posters, badges and flyers from the march.

As part of the project, the pictures will then be made available online free for anyone to view and will become a permanent part of the archives collection.

In addition to this archive work, there will also be two arts strands to the project:

The first will involve internationally renowned photographer Ajamu X³ who will take a series of 20 portraits of people who marched in 1981 and people who are part of the LGBTQ+ community in Huddersfield today.

Ajamu was born in Huddersfield and saw the original Pride 81 march.

The full set of portraits will be displayed at the Lawrence Batley Theatre from 1 June to 31 August 2022.

After that, they will become a part of the permanent collection at Huddersfield Art Gallery.

The second event will see Inkbrew Productions create an immersive performance recreating Pride 81.

The audience will be participants in the march, co-creating the piece with actors playing activists from 1981, who tell their stories as they march. The piece will also be performed as a showcase at the Lawrence Batley Cellar Theatre, Huddersfield and the Kings Arms, Salford from 1-3 July 2022.

Percentage of LGBTQ adults in United States has doubled over past decade, Gallup finds

If younger Americans continue to come out at increasing rates, Gallup predicts the proportion of adults who identify as LGBTQ will exceed 10 percent in the near future.

The percent of American adults who identify as something other than heterosexual has doubled over the last 10 years, from 3.5 percent in 2012 to 7.1 percent, according to a Gallup poll released on 17 February 2022.

Gallup found that the increase is due to ​​”high LGBT self-identification, particularly as bisexual, among Generation Z adults,” who are 18 to 25.

It asked 12,416 American adults how they identify during telephone interviews last year, and found that younger American adults are much more likely to identify as LGBTQ than older generations.

More than 1 in 5, or 21 percent, of Generation Z adults identify as LGBTQ, Gallup found. That’s almost double the proportion of millennials, who are 26 to 41, at 10.5 percent, and nearly five times the proportion of Generation X, who are 42 to 57, at 4.2 percent. Less than 3 percent of baby boomers, who are 58 to 76, identify as LGBTQ, compared to just 0.8 percent of traditionalists, who are 77 or older.

As the youngest Americans slowly outnumber and replace the oldest, Gallup predicts the number of LGBTQ-identifying adults will only increase — and likely at a much faster rate than past generations.

If the trend of millennials and Generation Z increasingly identifying as LGBTQ continues, “the proportion of LGBT Americans should exceed 10 percent in the near future,” Gallup found.

Bisexuals make up 4 percent of all American adults

Bisexuality is the most common identifier used among LGBTQ Americans, which is in line with a Gallup report released last year. More than half of LGBTQ Americans, at 57 percent, are bisexual. 

Over one-fifth of LGBTQ respondents, or 21 percent, are gay, 14 percent are lesbian, 10 percent are transgender and 4 percent identify as something else. 

Overall, 4 percent of American adults identify as bisexual, compared to 1 percent who identify as lesbian, 1.5 percent as gay, 0.7 percent as transgender and 0.3 percent as other. Heterosexuals comprised 86.3 percent of total respondents, and 6.6 percent did not offer an opinion.

Generation Z adults are the most likely to identify as bisexual, at 15 percent overall, compared to 6 percent of millennials and less than 2 percent of Generation X, baby boomers and traditionalists. 

Increasing acceptance — in certain areas

According to Gallup, 70% of Americans are currently in support of same-sex marriage, marking a steep increase from 1996, when only 27% of Americans supported it.

But that support varies when broken down further. For example, Gallup’s annual Values and Beliefs survey found last year that 66 percent of people favour allowing openly transgender people to serve in the military, but at the same time, 62 percent of Americans say trans athletes should only be allowed to play on sports teams that correspond with the sex they were assigned at birth, while 34 percent say they should be able to play on teams that match their gender identity.

Mara Keisling, former executive director of the National Center for Transgender Equality, noted that as more Americans know trans people and more young people identify as LGBTQ, acceptance will grow. As for those pushing anti-transgender legislation, she added, “Someday, they’ll be in the dustbin of history.”